Xerénte language
Akuwẽ language spoken in Brazil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Xerénte or Akwẽ-Xerénte language is an Akuwẽ (Central Jê) language (Jê, Macro-Jê) of Brazil. It is spoken by the Xerente people in the Tocantins state between Rio do Sono and Rio Tocantins.
Phonology
- Vowels /i, ɨ, u, a/ are realized as [ɪ, ɨ̞, ʊ, ɐ] when occurring in unstressed syllables.
- [ɡ] is heard as an allophone of /k/ when preceding another consonant.
- /d/ can be heard as dental [d̪] when preceding /i/.
- /s/ can be heard as a post-alveolar or retroflex sibilant [ʃ~ʂ] when preceding /i/.
- /h/ when preceding /i/ can be heard as a voiced velar or glottal fricative [ɣ~ɦ].
- /h/ when preceding /k/ becomes a velar fricative [x].
- /n/ when preceding the vowels /i, õ, ɔ/ is realized as a palatal nasal [ɲ].
- /ɾ/ may also be heard as a retroflex flap [ɽ].[2]
Grammar
Personal pronouns
| Person[3] | Nominative | Emphatic | Absolutive | Tense-Aspect-Mood-Person
markers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1S | wa | wahã | ĩ- | wa- |
| 1P | wanõrĩ (nĩ) | - | wa- | |
| 2S | ka, toka | kahã | ai- | bî-, te- |
| 2P | kanõrĩ (kwa), tokanõrĩ | - | ||
| 3S | ta | tahã | Ø-, ã-, ti-, t- | Ø-, mã-, te- |
| 3P | tanõrĩ | tahãnõrĩ |
The nominative and emphatic forms are free morphemes with the function of subject of transitive or intransitive sentences. The absolutive pronoun prefixes mark possessors, objects of postpositions, direct objects, subjects of nominal predicates and subjects of intransitive verbs with post-verbal operators.
